GREEK EXPLORATION—ALEXANDER—MODERN BALKH—THE BALKH PLAIN AND BAKTRIA

Twenty-two centuries have rolled away since the first military expedition from Europe was organized and led into the wilds of an Asia which was probably as civilized then as it is now. Two thousand two hundred years, and yet along the wild stretches of the Indian frontier, where a mound here and there testifies to the former existence of some forgotten camp, or where in the slant rays of the evening sun faint indications may be traced on the level Punjab flats of the foundation of a city long since dead, the name of the great Macedonian is uttered with reverence and awe as might be the name of a god who can still influence the lives of men, yet qualified by an affix which indicates a curious survival of the mythological conception of gods as human beings. You may wander through some of the valleys cleft through the western frontier hills, where an intermittent rivulet of water spreads a network of streamlets on the boulder-covered bed of the nullah, and where the stony hills rise in barren slopes on either side, and find, perchance half hidden by weather-worn debris and tufts of stringy verdure, the remains of what was once an artificial water-channel, stone built and admirably graded, and you may ask who was responsible for this construction. Not a man can say. There is no history, no tradition even, connected with it. It passes their understanding. Doubtless it was the work of "Sekunder" (Alexander)—that prehistoric, mythological, incomprehensible, and yet beneficent being who lives in the minds of the frontier people as the apotheosis of the Deputy Commissioner. Yet the impression left on India by the Greeks is marvellously small. It is chiefly to be found in the architecture and the sculpture of the Punjab. The Greek language disappeared from the Indus valley about the end of the tenth century A.D., and there is hardly a Greek place-name now to be recognized anywhere on the Indus banks. But any unusual relic of the past, the story of which has passed beyond the memory of the present tribes-people (even though it may be obviously of mediÆval Arabic origin), is invariably attributed to Alexander. It is, however, chiefly in the sculpture and decorations of Buddhist buildings (which never existed in Alexander's day) that clear evidence exists of Greek art conception. The classical features and folded raiment of the sculptured saints and buddhas, which are found so freely in certain parts of the Punjab, are obviously derived from original Greek ideals which may very possibly have been transmitted through Rome.

With Alexander in India we have nothing to do in these pages. It is as the first explorer in the regions beyond India, the Afghan and Baluchistan hinterlands, that he at present concerns us; and it may fairly be stated that no later expedition combining scientific research with military conquest ever added more to the sum of the world's knowledge of those regions than that led by Alexander. For centuries after it no light arises on the geographical horizon of the Indian border. Indeed, not until political exigencies caused by Russia's steady advance towards India compelled a revision of political boundaries in Persia, Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and India, was any very accurate idea obtained of the geographical conditions of Northern and Western Afghanistan, or of Baluchistan, or of Southern Persia. The mapping of these countries has been recent, and the progress of it, as year by year the network of Indian triangulation and topography spread westward and northward, has reopened many sources of light which, if not altogether new, have lain hidden ever since the Macedonian conqueror passed over them. Long before the Greek army mustered on the banks of the Hellespont we have seen that the highways to the East were well trodden and well known. It was not likely that Alexander's intelligence department was lacking in information. For many centuries subsequent to that expedition the rise of the Parthian power absolutely cut off these old-world trade communications and set the restless tides of human emigration into new channels. But in Alexander's time there was nothing in Persia to interrupt the interchange of courtesies between East and West.

The great Aryan tide had already flowed from the Central Asian highlands into India, but Jutes and Skyths had yet to make that great drift westward which peopled half of Europe with nomadic tribes speaking kindred tongues—a drift which never rested in its westward advance till, as Anglians and Saxons, it had enveloped England and faced its final destiny in an American continent. Assyria had passed by with arts and commerce rather than with arms, and Persia had followed in Assyrian tracks. Both had established colonies half-way to India in the Afghan highlands, Persia with the aid of captive Greeks, and Assyria with people taken from the Syrian land. The list of Assyrian and Persian satrapies included all those lands which we now call the hinterland of India, and which in Alexander's time must have been absolutely Persianized. But beyond the historical evidence which can be collected to prove the early, the constant, traffic which ensued between Mesopotamia, or Asia Minor, and India, after the consolidation of those two great empires, there is the tradition which certain Greek writers (notably Arrian) treat rather scornfully, of the conquest of Upper India by the mythical hero Bacchus. It is never wise to treat any tradition scornfully, and Arrian is himself obliged to admit the difficulty of explaining certain records connected with Alexander's history, without assuming that the tradition was not groundless.

Writing of the city of Nysa, Arrian says that "it was built by Dionysos or Bacchus, when he conquered the Indians; but who this Bacchus was, or at what time or from whence he conquered the Indians is hard to determine, whether he was that Theban who from Thebes, or he who from Timolus, a mountain of Lydia, undertook that famous expedition into India is very uncertain." There is a Greek epic poem in hexameter verse, called the "Dionysiaka," or "Bassarika," which tells of the conquest of India by Bacchus, the greatest of all his achievements. The author is Nonnus of Panopolis in Egypt, who wrote about the beginning of the fifth century of our era. Bacchus is said to have received a command from Zeus to turn back the Indians, who had extended their conquests to the Mediterranean, and in the execution of this command he marched through Syria and Assyria. In Assyria he was entertained with magnificent hospitality. Nothing further is said of the route he took to reach India. The first battle which took place in India was on the banks of the Hydaspes, where the Indians were routed. Then followed as an incident in the war the destruction of the Indian fleet in a naval battle, which is instructive. It took the assistance of the goddess of war, Pallas Athene, to bring the campaign to a conclusion, which terminated with the death of the Indian leader Deriades. Here, then, is crystallized in verse the tradition to which Arrian refers, and remembering that we are indebted to two great epics of India, the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabharata," for such glimmering of the ancient history of the Aryan occupation of India as we possess, we may very well conceive that the germs of real historical fact lie half-concealed in this poem of Nonnus. However that may be, it is tolerably certain that Alexander found a people in Northern India who claimed a Greek origin when he arrived there, quite apart from the colonists of Baktria who had been transported there by Darius Hydaspes, and that he recognized their claim to distant relationship.

When Alexander, then, mustered his army in the sunny fields of Macedon he was preparing for an expedition over no uncertain ways between Greece and Baktria or Arachosia (Northern and Western Afghanistan). He knew what lay before him if he could once break through the Persian barrier; and the strength of that barrier he must have been well aware lay as much in the stern fighting qualities of the mercenary Greek legions in the pay of Persia as in the hosts of Persian and Indian troops which the Persian monarch could array against him. We have lists of the component forces on both sides. The Macedonian legions were homogeneous and patriotic. The Persian army was partly European, but chiefly Asiatic, with a mixed company of Asiatic troops such as has probably never taken the field since. The opposing forces, indeed, partook of the nature of the two armies which fought out the issue of the Russo-Japanese campaign, and the result was much the same. There was no tie of national sentiment to bind together the unwieldy cohorts of Persia. They fought for their pay, and they fought well; but when big battalions are divided in religious sentiment and unswayed by patriotism, they are no match for Macedonian cohesion, Mahomedan Jehad, or Japanese Bushido.

It is quite interesting to examine the details of Alexander's army. The main body consisted of six brigades of 3000 men, each united to form an irresistible phalanx. Heavily armoured, with a long shield, a long sword, and a four-and-twenty foot spear (sarina), the infantryman of the phalanx must have possessed a powerful physique to enable him to carry himself and his weapons in the field. The depth of the phalanx was sixteen ranks, and the first six ranks were so placed that they could all bring their spears into action at once. The bulk of the phalanx consisted of Macedonians only. The light infantry, bowmen, and dartsmen numbered about 6000. A third corps of 6000 men more lightly armed, but with longer swords than the phalangists (called Hypaspists), were intermediate. The cavalry consisted of three classes, light, heavy, and medium, 3000 Macedonian and Thessalian horsemen, heavily armoured, forming its main strength. The light cavalry were Thracian lancers. The Royal Horse Guard included eight Macedonian squadrons of horsemen picked from the best families in Greece. It is useful to note that there were mounted infantry and artillery (i.e. balistai and katapeltai) with the force. More useful still to note that none of Alexander's victories were won by the solid strength of his phalanx; it was the sweeping and resistless force of his cavalry charges (often led by himself) that gained them.

Perhaps the most notable feature about this Greek expedition to India was the fact that it was the first military expedition of which there is any record which included scientific inquiry as one of its objects. Alexander had on his personal staff men of literary if not of scientific acquirements, and it is to them doubtless that we owe a comparatively clear account of the expedition, although unfortunately their records have only been transmitted to us by later authors. If we could but recover originals what a host of doubtful points might be cleared up! It is true that previous to the date of Alexander one man of genius, Xenophon, had kept a record of a magnificent military achievement, and had proved himself to be master of literature as he was of the science of leading; but Xenophon stands alone, and it may be doubted whether, during the many centuries which have passed away since the era of Greek supremacy, any practical leader of men has ever attained such a splendid position in the ranks of writers of military history. Alexander appears, at any rate, to have been no historian, but his staff of cultivated literary assistants and men of letters included many notable Greek names.

Alexander crossed the Hellespont in the spring of the year 334 B.C., and first encountered the Persians near the Granikos River. The battle was decisive although the losses on either side do not appear to have been heavy. It was but the augury of what was to follow. The subsequent advance of the Macedonian troops southward through the lovely land of Iona, and the reduction of Miletus and Helikarnassos, brought the first year's campaign to a close. The second year opened with the conquest of Pamphyllia and Phrygia, the passage of the Tauros ranges being made in winter. On the return of spring he recrossed the Tauros and reduced the western hill-tribes of Kilikia. Part of his force, meanwhile, had occupied the passes into Syria known as the Syrian gates. Within two days march of the Syrian gates the Persian hosts again were massed in an open plain under Darius, who had advanced from the east, waiting to fall upon the Macedonian troops and crush them as they debouched from the defile. Tired of waiting, however, Darius moved forward into Kilikia by the Amanian passes to look for Alexander, and thus it happened that when Alexander finally emerged from the Syrian gates into the plains of Syria he found his enemy behind him. He partially retraced his steps and regained the pass by midnight, and there from one of the adjoining summits he "beheld the Persian watch-fires gleaming far and wide over the plain of Issos." The rapidity of Alexander's movements was only equalled by the fierce energy of his onslaught when he led his cavalry against the unwieldy formations of his Persian enemy. It was his own hand that gained the victory both then and afterwards.

There is no more stirring story in all history than this progress of the Macedonian force. Step by step it has been traced out from Granikos to Issos and from Issos to Arbela; but this is not the place to recapitulate that part of the story which applies only to Western Asia. It is not until after the final decisive battle at Arbela, when Darius fled in hot haste along the south-eastern road to Ecbatana, the former capital of Media, and thence in the spring of 330 B.C. retreated with a disorganized force and an intriguing court towards Baktria, where he hoped to find a refuge with his kinsman Bessos the satrap of that province, that we really touch on the subject with which we wish to deal in this book, viz. the high-roads to Afghanistan in those long past days. Alexander, meanwhile, had received the submission of Babylon and restored the temple of Belus, and made himself master of a more spacious empire than the world had yet seen. It was then that the amazing results of his military success began to turn his head. From this point the severe simplicity of the Macedonian soldier is exchanged for the luxury, arrogance, and intolerance of the despot and conqueror. As Alexander advanced in material strength so did he slide down the easy descent of moral retrogression, and whilst we can still admire his magnificence as a military leader we find little else left to admire about him. From Babylon to the lovely valley wherein lies Susa, and from Susa to Persepolis, was more or less of a triumphal march in spite of the fierce opposition of the satrap Artobaizanes. Of Persepolis we are taught to believe that Alexander left nothing behind him but blackened ruins—the result of a drunken orgy. During the winter, amidst snow and ice, he subdued the Mardians in their mountain fastnesses (for he never left an active foe on the flank or rear), and with the return of the sweet Persian spring he renewed his hunt after Darius, turning his face to the north and east.

There are two high-roads through Persia to the East—one leading to Northern Afghanistan and the Oxus regions over Mashad, the other to Kirman, Seistan, and Kandahar. Along both of them there now runs a telegraph line connecting with the Russian system via Mashad, and the Indian system via Kirman. They must always have been high-roads—the great trade routes to Central Asia and India. Where the orderly line of telegraph poles now stretches in unending regularity to mark the dusty highway, there, through more ages than we can count, the padded foot of the camel must have worn the road into ridges and ruts as he plodded his weary way with loads of merchandise and fodder. No geological evolution can have disturbed those tracks since the Assyrian kings first drew riches from the East and started colonies on the Baktrian highlands; they are now as they were 1000 years before Christ, and it is only natural that in the ordinary course of the same unresting spirit of enterprise the telegraph posts will sooner or later cast long shadows over a passing railway. The desert regions of Persia separate these two roads: the wide flat spaces of sand or "Kavir"; an unending procession of sand-hills on the glittering fields of salt-bound swamp. The desert is crossable—it has been fairly well exploited—but nothing so far has been found in it to justify the expectation of great discoveries of dead and buried cities, or traces of a former civilization such as once occupied the deserts of Chinese Turkistan.

We may well believe that the central deserts of Persia were the same in Alexander's time as they are in ours. Consequently any large company of people would have been more or less forced into one or other of the well-known routes which the geographical configuration of the country presented to them. In his pursuit of Darius Alexander followed the northern route to Baktria which strikes a little north of east from Ecbatana (Hamadan), and in these days leads direct to Tehran the modern capital of Persia. The tragical fate of Darius, and Alexander's crocodile grief thereat, belongs to another story. It is only when he touches the regions beyond Mashad that he figures as one of the earliest explorers of Afghanistan, and certainly the earliest of whom we have any certain record. Unfortunately these records say very little of the nature of those cities and centres of human life which he found on the Afghan border; nor is there any definite allusion to be found in the writings of Alexander's historians to the colonial occupation of Afghanistan which must have preceded the Persian conquests. We have seen that Assyrian influence was strongly and continuously felt in India for many centuries after the consolidation of the Second Assyrian Empire, and the probability that between the Tigris and the Oxus there must have been intercommunication from the earliest days of the rise of Assyrian power.

There is one ragged and time-worn city in Afghan Turkistan which certainly belongs to the centuries preceding the era of Alexander—it was the capital of Baktria, the city of Bessos, and it has been a great centre of commerce, a city of pilgrimage, Buddhist and Mahomedan, for many a century since. This is Balkh, traditionally known as the "Mother of cities," whose foundation is variously ascribed to Nimrud, or to "Karomurs the Persian Romulus," Assyrian or Persian as the fancy strikes the narrator. Of its extreme antiquity there can be no doubt. It is certain that at a very early date it was the rival of Ecbatana, of Nineveh, and of Babylon. Bricks with inscriptions are said to have been found there some seventy years ago, and similar bricks should certainly be there still. Officers of the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commission passed through modern Balkh in 1884, but no such bricks were found during the very cursory and entirely superficial examination which was all that could be made of the place; square bricks, without inscription, of the size and quality of those which may any day be dug out of the Birs Nimrud at Babylon were certainly found, and point to a similarity of construction in a part of the ancient walls, which is surely not accidental. Modern Balkh consists of about 500 houses of Afghan settlers, a colony of Jews, and a small bazaar set in the midst of a waste of ruins and many acres of debris. The walls of the city are 6½ or 7 miles in perimeter; in some places they are supported by a rampart like the walls of Herat. These, of course, are modern, as is the fort and citadel, or Bala Hissar, which stands on a mound to the north-east. The green cupola of the Masjid Sabz and the arched entrance to the ruined Madrasa testify to modern Mahomedan occupation, as do the Top-i-Rustam and the Takht-i-Rustam (two ancient topes) to the fervour of religious zeal with which its Buddhist inhabitants invested it in the early centuries of our era. Balkh awaits its Layard, and not only Balkh, for there are mounds and ruins innumerable scattered through the breadth of the Balkh plain.

As one approaches Balkh by the Akcha road from the west, one looks anxiously around for some outward signs of its extreme antiquity. They are not altogether wanting, but time and the mellowing hand of Nature have rounded off the edges of the mounds of debris which lie scattered over miles of the surrounding country, brushing them over with the fresh green of vegetation, and leaving no sign by which to judge of the age of them. It is difficult in this part of Asia to get back farther than the age of the great destroyer Chenghiz Khan. His time has passed by long enough to leave but little evidence that the hand of the destroyer was his hand; but probably nothing visible on the surface dates back further than the six centuries which have come and gone since his Mongol hordes were set loose. Beyond these surface ruins and below them there must be cities arranged, as it were, in underground flats, one piled on another, strata below strata, till we reach the debris of the pre-Semitic days of Western and Central Asia, when the Turanian races who supplied Arcadian civilization to Mesopotamia peopled the land. Just as we cannot tell exactly when Babylon first became a city, so are we confounded by the age of Balkh. Babylon belongs to the time when myths were grouped around the adventures of a solar hero. Ultimately, however, the Ca-dimissa of the Accad became the Bab-ili (the "gate of God") of the Semite. It was always the "gate of God," but whether the presiding deity was always the Accadian Merodach seems doubtful. Fourteen or fifteen centuries before Christ there was probably a Balkh as there was a Babylon; and from time immemorial and a date unreckoned Balkh and Babylon must have been the two great commercial centres of Asia. What a history to dig out when its time shall come!

As the Akcha road leads into the city it passes the outer wall, which is about 30 feet high, by a gateway which is frankly nothing more than a gap in the partially destroyed wall. It then skirts along, past a ziarat gay with red flags, to a gateway in the second wall under the citadel leading to an avenue of poplars ending with a garden. Here is a pretentious and fairly comfortable caravanserai, facing a court which is shaded by magnificent plane trees. At first sight Balkh appears to consist of nothing but ruins, but ascending the mound, which is surrounded by the dilapidated fort walls, one can see from this vantage of about 70 feet how many new buildings are grouped round the remnants of the old Mahomedan mosque, of which the dome and one great gateway are all that is left.

The plain of the ancient Baktria, of which Balkh represents the capital, lies south of the Oxus River, extending east and west for some 200 miles parallel to the river after its debouchment from the mountains of Badakshan. It is flat, with a scattering of prominences and mounds at intervals denoting the site of some village or fortress of sufficient antiquity to account for its gradual rise on the accumulations of its own debris, probably assisted in the first instance by some topographical feature. Looking south it appears to be flanked by a flat blue wall of hills, presenting no opportunity for escalade or passage through them, a blue level line of counterscarp, which is locally known as the Elburz. This great flanking wall is in reality very nearly what it appears to be—an unassailable rampart; but there are narrow ways intersecting it not easily discernible, and through these ways the rivers of the highlands make a rough passage to the plains. Wherever they tumble through the mountain gateways and make placid tracks in the flats below, they are utilized for irrigation purposes, and so there exists a narrow fringe of cultivation under the hills, which extends here and there along the banks of the rivers out into the open Balkh plain. But these rivers never reach the Oxus. This is not merely because the waters of them are absorbed in irrigation, but because there is a well-ascertained tectonic action at work which is slowly raising the level of the plain. Thus it happens that whilst big affluents from the north bring rushing streams of much silt-stained water to the great river, no such affluents exist on the south. The waters of the Elburz streams are all lost in the Oxus plain ere they reach the river. Nevertheless there are abundant evidences of the former existence of a vast irrigation system drawn from the Oxus. The same lines of level mounds which break the horizon of the plains of Babylon are to be seen here, and they denote the same thing. They are the containing walls of canals which carried the Oxus waters through hundreds of square miles of flat plain, where they never can be carried again because of the alteration in the respective levels of plain and river. Ten centuries before Christ, at least, were the plains of Babylon thus irrigated, and just as the arts of Greece and India rose on the ashes of the arts of Nineveh, so doubtless was the science of irrigation carried into the colonial field of Baktria from Assyria, and thus was the city of "Nimrud" surrounded with a wealth of cultivation which rendered it famous through Asia for more centuries than we can tell. Whether or no the science of irrigation drifted eastwards from the west it seems more than probable that the ruined and decayed water-ways which intersect the Balkh plain were primarily due to the introduction of Syrian labour, and account for the presence in that historic region of a people amongst others who claim descent from captive Israelites. There are no practical irrigation engineers in the world (excepting perhaps the Chinese) who can rival the Afghans in their knowledge of how to make water flow where water never flowed before. It is of course impossible, on such evidence as we possess as yet, to claim more than the appearance of a probability based on such an undeniable possibility as this.

After the death of Darius his kinsman Bessos escaped into his own satrapy (probably to Balkh), and there assumed the upright tiara, the emblem of Persian royalty, taking at the same time the name of Artaxerxes.

True to his invariable principle of leaving no unbeaten enemy on the flank of his advance, Alexander proceeded to subjugate Hyrkania, from which country he was separated by the Elburz (Persian) mountains. He crossed those mountains in three divisions by separate passes, and effected his purpose with his usual thoroughness and without much difficulty. Having crushed the Mardians he shaped a straight course eastward to Herat on his way to Baktria, marching by the great highway which connects Tehran with Mashad. The country around Mashad (part of Khorasan) was a satrapy of Persia under Satibarzanes, who submitted without apparent opposition and was confirmed in his government. The capital of this province was Artakoana, described as a city situated in a plain of exceptional fertility where the main roads from north to south and from west to east crossed each other. To no place does such a description apply so closely as Herat, and it has consequently been assumed that Herat indicates more or less closely the site of the ancient city Artakoana, which, indeed, is most probable. But Alexander had not long passed that city in his march towards Baktria when the news of the revolt of Satibarzanes reached him with the story of the loss of the Macedonian escort which had been left with that satrap and had been massacred to a man. He immediately turned on his tracks, captured Artakoana, routed the satrap, and by way of leaving a permanent monument of his victory founded a new city in the neighbourhood which he called Alexandreia. This is probably the actual origin of the modern Herat, and it is a tribute to the sagacity of the Macedonian King that from that time to this it has abundantly proved its importance as a strategical and commercial centre.

The forward march to Baktria would have taken the Greek army via Kushk, Maruchak, and Maimana along the route which is practically the easiest and safest for a large body of troops. It is the route followed by the Afghan Boundary Commission in 1885. Alexander, however, instead of resuming his march on Baktria, elected to crush another of the Persian satraps who was concerned in the murder of Darius and who ruled a province to the south of Herat. Crossing the Hari Rud he therefore marched straight on Farah (Prophthasia), then the capital of Seistan (Drangiana). Farah is considerably to the north of any part of the Afghan province of Seistan at present, but it was undoubtedly Alexander's objective, and the Drangiana of those times was considerably more extensive than the Seistan of to-day—a fact which will go some way to account for the exaggerated reports of the ancient wealth and fertility of that province. Farah is a great agricultural centre still, and would add enormously to the restricted cultivable area of Seistan, even if one allows for the effects of sand encroachment in that unpleasant region. Then occurred the plot against Alexander's life which was detected at Prophthasia, and the consequent torture and death of Philotas, who probably had no part in it. It is one of the many actions of Alexander's life which reveals the ferocity of the barbarian beneath the genius of the soldier. It was but the barbarity of his age—a barbarity for the matter of that which lasted in England till the time of the Georges, and which still survives in Afghanistan. After a halt in Seistan, probably whilst waiting for reinforcements, he struck north-eastwards again for Baktria. As it is generally assumed that the Macedonian force now followed the Helmund valley route to the Paropamisos, i.e. the Hindu Kush and its extension westwards, it is as well to consider what sort of a country it is that forms the basin of Helmund.

It is worth remarking in the first place that the Ariaspian inhabitants of the Helmund valley had received from Cyrus the name of Euergetai, or benefactors, because they had assisted him at a time when he had been in great difficulties. This is enough to satisfy us that the district was known and had been traversed by a military force long before Alexander entered it, and that he was making no venturesome advance in ignorance of what lay before him. The valley of the Helmund (or Etymander) could not have differed greatly in its geographical features 300 years before Christ from its present characteristics. The Helmund of the Seistan basin then occupied a different channel to its present outlets into the Seistan swamps. How different it is difficult to tell, for it has frequently changed its course within historic times, silting up its bed and striking out a new channel for itself, splitting into a number of streams and wandering uncontrolled in loops or curves over the face of the flat alluvial plains to which it brought fertility and wealth. It has been a perpetual source of political discussion as a boundary between Afghanistan and Persia, and it has altered the face of the land so extensively and so often that there is nothing in ancient history referring to the vast extent of agricultural wealth and the immensity of its population which can be proved to be impossible, although it seems likely enough that false inferences have been drawn from the widespread area of ruined and deserted towns and villages which are still to be seen and may almost be counted. It is not only that the water-supply and facilities for irrigation, by shifting their geographical position, have carried with them the potentialities for cultivation. Other forces of Nature which seem to be set loose on Seistan with peculiar virulence and activity have also been at work. The sweeping blasts of the north-west wind, which rage through this part of Asia with a strength and persistence unknown in regions more protected by topographical features, carrying with them vast volumes of sand and surface detritus, piling up smooth slopes to the windward side of every obstruction, smoothing off the rough angles of the gaunt bones of departed buildings, and sometimes positively wearing them away by the force of attrition, play an important part in the kaleidoscopic changes of Seistan landscape. Villages that are flourishing one year may be sand-buried the next. Channels that now run free with crop-raising water may be choked in a month, and all the while the great Helmund, curving northward in its course, pours down its steady volume of silt from the highlands, carrying tons of detritus into open plains where it is spread out, sun-baked, dried, wind-blown, and swirled back again to the southward in everlasting movement. Thus it is that the evidence of hundreds of square miles of ruins is no direct evidence of an immense population at any one period. Nor can we say of this great alluvial basin, which is by turns a smiling oasis, a pestilential swamp, a huge spread of populous villages, or a howling desert smitten with a wind which becomes a curse and afflicted with many of the pests and plagues of ancient Egypt, that at any one period of its history more than another it deserved the appellation of the "granary of Asia." The Helmund of Seistan, however, is quite a different Helmund from the same river nearer its source. Its character changes from the point where it makes its great bend northward towards its final exit into the lagoons and swamps of the HamÚn. At Chaharburjak, where the high-road to Seistan from the south crosses the river into Afghan territory, the Helmund is a wide rippling stream (when not in flood), distinguished, if anything, for the clearness of its waters. From this point eastwards it parts two deserts. To the north the great, flat, windswept Dasht-i-Margo, about as desolate and arid a region as fancy could depict. To the south the desert of Baluchistan, by no means so absolutely devoid of interest, with its marshalled sand-dunes answering to the processes of the winds, its isolated but picturesque peaks like islands in a sand sea, a few green spots here and there showing where water oozes out from the buried feet of the rocky hills, decorated with bunches of flowering tamarisk and perchance a palm or two—a modified desert, but still a desert. Between the two deserts is the Helmund, running in a cliff-sided trough which is never more than a mile or two wide, intensely green and bright in the grass and crop season, with flourishing villages at reasonable intervals and a high-road connecting them from which can be counted that strange multitude of departed cities of the old Kaiani Kingdom, which are marked by a ragged crop of ruins still upstanding in a weird sort of procession. Sometimes the high-road sweeps right into the midst of a roofless palace, through the very walls of the ancient building, and outside may be found spaces brushed clean by the wind leaving masses of pottery, glass, and other common debris exposed.

One constant surprise to modern explorers is the extraordinary quantity of domestic crockery the remains of which surround old eastern cities; and almost yet more of a surprise it is how far and how widespread are certain easily recognized specialities, such, for instance, as the so-called "celadon." Chips and fragments of celadon are to be found from Babylon to Seistan, from Seistan to India, in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Siam. In Siam are all that remains of what were probably the original furnaces. Every shower of rain that falls in this extended cemetery of crumbling monuments reveals small treasures in the way of rings, coins, seals, etc. Much of the cultivation and of the extent of population indicated by the ruins in this narrow valley must have existed in the times of Alexander of Macedon and the Ariaspians, and we find no difficulty in accepting the Helmund (or Etymander) as the line of route which he followed for a certain distance. Indeed, there is much more than a passing probability that he followed the line which gave him water and supplies as far as the junction of the Argandab and Helmund, for the problem of crossing the desert from the Helmund valley to Nushki and the cultivated districts of Kalat is a serious one—one, indeed, which gave the Russo-Afghan Boundary Commissioners much anxious thought. But beyond the Argandab junction it is extremely improbable that Alexander followed the Helmund. The Helmund and its surroundings have been carefully surveyed from this point through the turbulent districts of Zamindawar for 100 miles or more, and again from its source near Kabul for some fifty miles of its downward flow. The Zamindawar section of the river affords an open road, although the river, as we follow it upward, gradually becomes enclosed in comparatively narrow (yet still fertile) valleys, and rapidly assumes the character of a mountain stream. North of Zamindawar and south of its exit from the Koh-i-Baba mountain system to the west of Kabul, no modern explorer has ever seen the Helmund. It there passes through the Hazara highlands, and although we have not penetrated that rugged plateau we know very well its character by repute, and we have seen similar country to the west where dwell cognate tribes—the Taimani and the Firozkohi. This upland basin of the Helmund to the west of Kabul and Ghazni, this cradle of a hundred affluents pouring down ice-cold water to the river, is but a huge extension southwards of the Hindu Kush, and from it emerge many of the great rivers of Afghanistan. To the north the rivers of Balkh and Khulm take a hurried start for the Oxus plains. Westward the Hari Rud streams off to Herat. South-westward extends the long curving line of the Helmund, and eastward flow the young branches of the Kabul. A rugged mountain mass called the Koh-i-Baba, the lineal continuation of the Hindu Kush, dominates the rolling plateau from the north and continues westward in an almost unbroken wall to the Band-i-Baian looking down into the narrow Hari Rud valley. It is a part of the continental divide of Asia, high, rugged, desolate, and almost pathless.

No matter from which side the toiler of the mountains approaches this elevated and desolate region, whether emerging from the Herat drainage he essays to reach Kabul, or from the small affluents of the Helmund he strikes for the one gap which exists between the Hindu Kush and the Koh-i-Baba which will lead him to Balkh and Afghan Turkistan, he will have enormous difficulties to encounter. It can be done, truly, but only with the pains and penalties of high mountaineering attached. Taken as a whole, the highest uplands above the sources of the minor rivers which water the bright and fertile valleys of Ghur, Zamindawar, and Farah may be described much as one would describe Tibet—a rolling, heaving, desolate tableland, wrinkled and intersected by narrow mountain ranges, whose peaks run to 13,000 and 14,000 feet in altitude, enclosing between them restricted spaces of pasture land. The Mongol population, who claim to have been introduced as military settlers by Chenghiz Khan, live a life of hard privation. They leave their barren wastes which the wind wipes clear of any tree growth, for the lower valleys in the winter months, merely resorting to them in the time of summer pasturage. The winter is long and severe. It is not the altitude alone which is accountable for its severity; it is the geographical position of this Central Afghan upheaval which exposes it to the full blast of the ice-borne northern winds which, sweeping across Turkistan with destructive energy, reduce the atmosphere of Seistan to a sand-laden fog, and penetrate even to the valley of the Indus where for days together they wrap the whole landscape in a dusty haze. For many months the Hazara highlands are buried under successive sheets of snowdrift. In summer, like the Pamirs, they emerge from their winter's sleep and become a succession of grass-covered downs. There are then open ways across them, and travellers may pass by many recognizable tracks. But in winter they are impassable to man and beast. Yet we are asked to believe that Alexander, who had the best of guides in his pay, and who knew the highways and byways of Asia as well, if not better, than they are known now to any military authorities, took his army in winter up the Helmund valley till it struck its sources somewhere under the Koh-i-Baba!

There was no madness in Alexander's methods. His withdrawal from India through the defiles and deserts of Makran was most venturesome and most disastrous, but he had a distinct object to gain by the attempt to pass into Persia that way. Here there was no object. The Helmund route does not, and did not, lead directly to his objective, Baktria, and there was another high-road always open, which must have been as well known then as, indeed, it is well known to-day. There can be very little doubt that he followed the Argandab to the neighbourhood of the modern Kandahar (in Arachosia), and from Kandahar to Kabul he took the same historic straight high-road which was followed by a later General (Lord Roberts) when he marched from Kabul to Kandahar. This would give him quite difficulties enough in winter to account for Arrian's story of cold and privations. It would lead him direct to the plains of the Kohistan north of Kabul, where there must have ever been the opportunity of collecting supplies for his force, and where, separated from him by the ridges of the Hindu Kush, were planted those Greek colonies of Darius Hystaspes whose assistance might prove invaluable to his onward movement. It was here, at any rate, not far from the picturesque village of Charikar, that he founded that city of Alexandreia, the remains of which appear to have been recently disturbed by the Amir, and to which we shall make further reference. Military text-books still speak of the Unai, or Bamian, as a pass which was traversed by the Greeks. It is most improbable that they ever crossed the Hindu Kush that way, and the question obviously arises in connection with this theory of his march—How was it possible for Alexander to spend the rest of the winter near the sources of the Helmund? It was not possible. His next step was to cross the Hindu Kush. This he attempted with difficulty in the spring, and reached a fertile country in fifteen days. He might have crossed by the Kaoshan Pass (which local tradition assigns as the pass which he really selected), or by the Panjshir, which is longer, but in some respects easier. The Panjshir is the pass usually adopted for the passage of large bodies of troops by the Afghans themselves, and there is reported to be, in these days, a well-engineered Khafila road, which is kept open by forced labour in snow-time, connecting Kabul with Andarab by this route. The pass of the Panjshir is about 11,600 feet high, whereas the Kaoshan, though straighter, is 14,300. Considering the slow rate of movement (fifteen days) it is more probable that he took the easier route via Panjshir. In either case he would reach the beautiful and fertile valley of Andarab, and from that base he could move freely into Baktria. The country had been ravaged and wasted by Bessos, but that did not delay Alexander. The chief cities of Baktria surrendered without opposition, and he pushed forward to the Oxus in his pursuit of Bessos.

All this would be more interesting if we could trace the route more closely which was followed to the Oxus. We know, however, that for previous centuries Balkh had been the capital city, the great trade emporium of all that region. There is therefore no difficulty in accepting Balkh as the Greek Baktria. Between Balkh and the Oxus the plains are strewn with ruins, some of them of vast extent, whilst other evidences of former townships are to be found about Khulm and Tashkurghan farther to the east, and on the direct route from Andarab to the Oxus. Bessos had retreated to Sogdiana of which Marakanda was capital, and the straight road to Marakanda (Samarkand) crosses the Oxus at Kilif. The description of the river Oxus at that point tallies fairly well with Arrian's account of it. It is deep and rapid, and the hill fortress of Kilif on the right bank, and of Dev Kala and other isolated rocky hills on the left, hedges in the river to a channel which cannot have changed through long ages. Elsewhere the Oxus is peculiarly liable to shift its channel, and has done so from time to time, forming new islands, taking fresh curves, and actually changing its destination from the Caspian to the Aral Sea; but at Kilif it must have ever been deep and rapid, covering a breadth of about three-quarters of a mile. Across the breadth nowadays is about as peculiar a ferry as was ever devised. Long, shallow, flat-bottomed boats, square as to bow and stern, are towed from side to side of the river by swimming horses. This would not be a matter of so much surprise if the horses employed for the purpose were powerful animals from fourteen to fifteen hands in height, but the remarkable feature about the Kilif stud is the diminutive and ragged crew of underfed ponies which it produces. And yet two, or even one, of these inefficient-looking little animals will tow across a barge of twenty feet or so in length, crowded with weighty bales of Bokhara merchandise, and filled as to interstices with its owners and their servants. The ponies are attached to outriggers with a strap from a surcingle or belly-band buckled to their backs, thus supporting their weight in the water at the same time that it takes the haulage. With their heads just above stream, snorting and blowing, they swim with measured strokes and tow the boat (advancing diagonally in crab-like fashion to meet the current) straight across the river. The inadequacy of the means to the end is the first thing which strikes the beholder, but he is, however, rapidly convinced of the extraordinary hauling capacity of a swimming horse when properly trained. Alexander crossed on rafts supported on skins stuffed with straw, and it took him five days to cross his force in this primitive fashion.

On the right bank of the river, Bessos was given up by traitors in his camp and was sent south to "Zariaspa" to await his doom. Zariaspa is identified with Balkh by some authorities, but the name is probably a variant on Adraspa which almost certainly was Andarab. Andarab was the fertile and promising district into which Alexander descended from the slopes of the Hindu Kush, by whichever route (Kaoshan or Panjshir) he crossed those mountains. Directly on the route between Andarab and Balkh is a minor province called Baglan, and a little less than half-way (after crossing a local pass of no great significance called Kotal Murgh) is a village or township, nowadays called Zardaspan, which is sufficiently like Zariaspa to suggest an identity which is at least plausible though it may be deceptive. But it is the fact that the town of Baraki which lies farther on the same route is on the outskirts of Baglan; and in this connection a reference to the theory put forward by Dr. Bellew in his Ethnography of Afghanistan (Asiatic Quarterly, October 1891) is at least interesting. He points out that the captive Greeks who were transported in the sixth century B.C. by Darius Hystaspes from the Lybian BarkÉ to Baktrian territory were still occupying a village called BarkÉ in the time of Herodotus. A century later again during the Macedonian campaign, Kyrenes, or Kyreneans, existed in that region according to Arrian, and it is difficult to account for them in that part of Asia unless they were the descendants of those same exiles from BarkÉ, a colony of Kyrene whom Darius originally transported to Baktria. They were in possession of the Kaoshan Pass too, and might have rendered very effective aid to Alexander during his passage across the mountains. Another body of Greek colonists are recorded to have been settled in this same part of Baktria by Xerxes after his flight from Greece, namely, the Brankhidai, whose original settlement appears to have been in Andarab. As we shall see later, people from Greece or from Grecian colonies undoubtedly drifted across Asia to Northern Afghanistan in even earlier times than those of the Persian Empire. There can, indeed, be very little doubt that Ariaspa, or Andarab, was an important position for the Greeks to occupy from its strategic value as commanding the most practicable of the Hindu Kush passes.

When Bessos, therefore, was deported across the Oxus to Zariaspa it is probable that he was sent to Andarab; and here too Alexander returned to winter towards the close of the year 329 B.C. after his extraordinary success in Sogdia (Bokhara). With his trans-Oxus campaign we have nothing to do; it is another history, and deeply interesting as it would be to follow it in detail we must return to Afghanistan. Nothing in all his Eastern campaign is more remarkable than the facility with which Alexander recruited his army from Greece during its progress. Gaps in the ranks were constantly filled up, and the fighting strength of his force maintained at a high level. His army was reorganized during the winter, and with the returning spring he again started expeditions across the Oxus, in the course of which he captured Roxana, the most beautiful woman in Asia (after the wife of Darius) and married her. The particular fortress which held this charming lady was perched on the top of an isolated craggy hill, and the story of its capture is as thrilling as that of Aornos subsequently. But, like Aornos, it is difficult to locate it. It might have been Dev Kala, or Kilif, or any of a dozen such rock-crowned hills which border the Oxus River. It is about this period that we read first of his encounters with the Skythic races of Central Asia, who gave him great trouble at the time and who subsequently subverted the Greek power in Baktria altogether. In the spring of 327 B.C. he moved out to invade a mountain district to the "East of Baktria" (probably modern Badakshan), and subdued the hill-tribes under Khorienes whom he confirmed in the government of his own country. It was summer ere he set out finally from Baktria on his Indian expedition. He recrossed the Paropamisos in ten days and halted at Alexandreia near Charikar. Then commences the first recorded expedition of the Kabul River basin.